Kimberly Lau found a home and safe space at the only Chinese immigrant church in Davis where the only people of color at her elementary school were three Asian children and an African-American child.
However, when Lau started questioning her sexuality in the eighth grade, she felt distant from the church, which did not validate her feelings and experiences due to its conservative beliefs about the LGBTQ community.
Lau was one of the many students who shared their experiences at a panel hosted by PRISM, an LGBTQ Christian fellowship group formerly affiliated with InterVarsity Bruin Christian Fellowship, on Tuesday in Moore Hall.
The panel members shared stories of their struggles with reconciling their sexuality and their faith, and finding acceptance within the straight Christian community. The stories were bound by an overarching theme of justice and validation, said Lau, a UCLA alumna and PRISM leader who helped organize the event.
“When we hear other people’s experiences and actually validate them, we’re actually transformed by those experiences,” Lau said. “I think that’s a distinctly spiritual act, to hear somebody’s experiences and say that that’s valid, that’s truth … and if it’s truth, it has to affect me and the way I practice my life.”
Lau said telling their stories helped students heal from a series of struggles the LGBTQ Christian community experienced within the UCLA community in 2016.
In October, InterVarsity Christian Fellowship/USA, the national branch of the campus fellowship, announced it would fire staff who openly disagreed with its stance on same-sex relationships. PRISM, which was founded within UCLA’s InterVarsity chapter in 2012, petitioned the policy and called for its reversal. After InterVarsity/USA refused to change its policy, PRISM broke away from the organization in January.
Tucker Moses-Hanson, a second-year Middle Eastern studies and study of religion student, said he thought the panel event was successful in helping move on from this crisis and providing InterVarsity members with much-needed closure caused by the lack of communication regarding PRISM’s decisions to break away from InterVarsity.
He said a majority of PRISM members voted to transition out of InterVarsity because they did not think it would be sensible or fair for them to operate under InterVarsity’s national restrictions on leadership. One such restriction was that LGBTQ members could not be in same-sex relationships while holding leadership positions.
Moses-Hanson said the majority of the InterVarsity community at UCLA was supportive of PRISM during this time.
“There was a great sadness throughout the whole organization because I don’t think there was anyone who wanted this to happen,” Moses-Hanson said. “This was all just a national thing, and it felt like it was out of people’s control.”
Despite the break from InterVarsity, Moses-Hanson said PRISM continues to maintain an informal relationship with the group through students who are still affiliated with both organizations and through relationships with former co-leaders in InterVarsity. However, he said the two groups may become more distant and completely unaffiliated with one another in the future.
“Members of both organizations are still concerned with the happenings of the other,” Moses-Hanson said. “That just doesn’t translate into leadership or structure.”
Since becoming an independent organization, PRISM has struggled with losing the resources that come with being a part of a large, national organization, Moses-Hanson said. He also said he is concerned about PRISM’s reduced ability to recruit new members, as many current and past members were directed to PRISM after first joining InterVarsity.
“Because there’s not this funneling process, where PRISM is an easy resource to send people to, we might not be helping people as easily because we aren’t as attached to places that could send them to us,” Moses-Hanson said.
However, he said PRISM now has the freedom to expand its reach to LGBTQ individuals in settings that are not highly Christian and go beyond their primary mission of teaching Christians about LGBTQ issues.
Jessica Ramos, a first-year biochemistry student and InterVarsity member, said she supports PRISM but understands why the organization left InterVarsity.
“A lot of people in InterVarsity at UCLA are supportive of PRISM and wanted them to stay,” Ramos said. “But if the national branch isn’t welcoming and there is a conflict between what we believe and what they believe, then we can’t expect them to want to stay.”
However, Ramos said she thinks the two organizations should continue to work together and maintain a friendly relationship.
“That doesn’t mean we can’t continue to help each other out,” Ramos said. “We still want to welcome and embrace our fellow brothers and sisters.”
During the panel, Lau said a key aspect of justice was a restoration of someone’s access to community.
“We need to change our conception of community,” Lau said. “The really interesting thing about justice is that sometimes it starts with validating someone’s experience.”